Hi, I'd just like to introduce myself to the Escapist. Anyway, I've been reading through the forums for a long time and I perceive a lot of fixation over the institution of an R18+ games rating for Australia. Now personally, just for the sake of creating some well meaning discussion, I'd like to question why? For what reason should we have R18+ ratings?
And please don't say 'because everyone else has one', it is not a logical reason.
Personally, I dislike playing games above an M15+ rating. In my mind's eye, if a game is so graphic or violent that it is rated MA15+, I don't need to play it; it's just violence for the sake of violence. Yes, I just shot that person with my blaster. Yes, they got shot in the arm, yes they fell over and died. So? My objection to R18+ games is that I don't want (or need) to see the person's arm being blown off in a splash of blood, with tendons still hanging from the dismembered flesh and the person screaming wildly as you then proceed to bludgeon them to death with their own arm. I realize now that a lot of hardcore gamers will disagree with this point, as they tend to regard ?realism? as central to a game.
I agree that realism is, to an extent, vital to a game in this modern age. However, mindless violence is detrimental to many games (remember the outrage of Australian gamers when, I think it was Dead Rising 2, had to be modified to fit the MA15+ ratings for Australia? One of the thrilling things they were missing out on was specifically 'the ability to strangle to death with the victim?s intestines'. Ha ha...) Perhaps a reasonable alternative could be that games could have in-built rating customisation? In the same way you change difficulty, why not change the amount of violence, gore etc? In Unreal Tournament there is always an option to turn off blood and gore, and because of this I've spent many happy hours versing my like-minded mates.
That said, I have played and enjoyed (enjoyed a lot!) MA15+ games such as Halo: Reach and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, and I believe them to be excellent. However, these games were neither mindlessly or gratuitously violent.
I guess all that I'm really saying is that it saddens me that whenever I walk into EB games these days, it's an actual struggle to find any game that isn?t rated MA15+ for the 360, and a torment to actually find many good games rated under MA15+. So I have to sit sadly on my couch, continually playing NBA Live or go back to playing wonderful PS1 games such as Crash and Spyro...
Anyway, after all that, I don't want comments on my opinion. If you decide to abuse, insult or objectify me, you probably only read the first sentence of my post, AND you are missing the point of this thread. Read the first paragraph again and comment on that please! Thanks!
GH